Passing through the stone passage made slippery by devils snare juice, a heavy wooden door appeared before them. Harry pushed the door open, and a cacophony of sounds, like a flock of birds flapping their wings, along with a soft glow, rushed toward them.
Behind the door was a massive room with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling.
And in the middle of the room, hundreds upon hundreds of small, glittering objects were flying in a dense swarm.
They all had a pair of light, fluttering wings, looking like a flock of brilliant hummingbirds.
They were keys.
Thousands of flying keys.
At the other end of the room was an even larger, tightly closed oak door.
On the door was an ancient silver keyhole; clearly, they needed to find the one correct key from the sea of keys in the sky.
"How long is this going to take?" Ron groaned in despair, looking up at the dizzying ocean of keys.
"It must have something special about it," Hermione analyzed with a frown, her gaze quickly scanning the swarm of keys. "That lock looks very old, so the key should be old too."
Harry's gaze fell upon a few things leaning crookedly against the wall in the corner of the room.
They were flying broomsticks.
One of them looked usable enough.
"I'll do it!" The confident light of a Seeker burned in Harry's eyes. "This is my specialty!"
He strode over, grabbed the broomstick, and mounted it without a moment's hesitation. With a kick of his feet, he shot off like an arrow from a bow, plunging into the "cloud" of keys.
Hermione and Ron looked up nervously, trying to find the target for Harry in the air. But the keys flew too fast, their paths were chaotic, and the light reflecting off their flapping wings made their eyes ache.
Hermione set Lia down from her arms.
Lia sat on the floor and tilted her little head up as well.
In human eyes, it was a chaotic and dizzying sight.
But in Lia's cat eyes, the world took on a different appearance.
Those flying points of light were instantly "slowed down" under her dynamic vision, which far surpassed that of humans. Every point's flight path and every wing's flapping frequency were clearly presented on her retina.
Her azure pupils contracted slightly, then suddenly dilated.
This wasn't chaos.
This was a hunting ground.
And those flying keys were the most lively prey.
Her natural hunting instincts were completely triggered. She didn't think like Hermione about "which one is old"; as a top-tier hunter, she knew how to find the most non-conformist, weakest, and best-hidden individual within a herd.
Her head turned slowly with the swarm of keys in the air, her body lowered, and the tip of her tail rhythmically tapped the ground behind her, as if gathering strength for the next pounce.
Harry circled in the air a few times but found nothing. The keys were very cunning; whenever he got close, they would immediately scatter or blend into larger swarms, making it impossible for him to distinguish them.
Time passed minute by minute.
Hermione and Ron's hearts were in their throats.
Just then, Lia's ears suddenly perked up.
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